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Change and Continuity in the Treatment of German Kriegsopfer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

James M. Diehl
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Type
Symposium: Continuity and Change in Germany after 1945
Information
Central European History , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 170 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 1985

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References

1. On the problem of reform versus restoration and the relevant literature, see Rautenberg, Hans-Jürgen, “Zur Standortbestimmung für künftige deutsche Streitkräfte 1945–1956,” in Foerster, Roland G., et al. , Anfänge westdeutscher Sicherheitspolitik, vol. 1, Von der Kapitulation bis zum Pleven Plan, (Munich, 1982), 765ff.Google Scholar

2. On the treatment of disabled veterans during and after the First World War, see Whalen, Robert W., Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War, 1914–1939, (Ithaca, 1984).Google Scholar

3. For details of the RVG, see ibid., chaps. 9–10 and Rühland, Helmut, “Entwicklung, heutige Gestaltung und Problematik der Kriegsopferversorgung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland” (Inauguraldissertation, Universität Köln, 1957), 24–61.Google Scholar For a comparative perspective, see Geyer, Michael, “Ein Vorbote des Wohlfahrtsstaates: Die Kriegsopferversorgung in Frankreich, Deutschlandund Grossbritannien nach dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 9, no. 2 (1983).Google Scholar

4. On these cuts and the response to them, see, for example, “Die Rückläufigkeit der Versorgung und Fürsorge für die Kriegsopfer im Zeichen der Notverordnungen,” distributed in 1932 to members of the Reichstag and the government by the Reichsbund der Kriegsbeschädigten, Kriegsteilnehmer und Kriegshinterbliebenen.

5. For examples of the National Socialist arguments, see the publications of the N.S.-Kriegsopferversorgung in the Bundesarchiv, Koblenz (hereafter cited as BAK), Bestand NSD/54.

6. For a history of the NSKOV and details on the treatment of war victims in the Third Reich, see my forthcoming article, “Victors or Victims? Disabled Veterans in the Third Reich.”

7. For details, see Rühland, 66–85, and Max Wenzel, “50 Jahre Kriegsopferversorgung, ” VdK Mitteilungen: Sonderdruck aus Heft 12/1968, 16–34.

8. Wenzel, 24, 29–30.

9. On Wehrmacht benefits, see Absolon, Rudolf, Die Wehrmacht im Dritten Reich, (Boppard, 1971), vol. 2, chap. 6 and vol. 4, chap. 7.Google Scholar

10. Wenzel, 28. One expert even claimed that benefits had been better under the Kaiserreich. Ibid., 29.

11. Ibid., 23–34. Also see “Die Versorgung der Kriegsbeschädigten und ihrer Hinterbliebenen in Deutschland,” esp. 3, 15, National Archives and Records Service, Washington, D.C. (hereafter NARS), Office of Military Government, United States, Record Group 260, Box 56, Folder 13. Materials from this collection will hereafter be cited as OMGUS 260, followed by box and folder number.

12. The bankruptcy of the war-disability system reflected the bankruptcy of the Third Reich as a whole. In the six wartime budget years the Reich spent 685 billion Reichsmarks, of which nearly three-quarters (some 510 billion Reichsmarks) went for the war and armaments proper (Stolper, Gustav, et al. , The German Economy 1870 to the Present, [New York, 1967], 165Google Scholar). The expenditures for disabled veterans and survivors naturally in creased dramatically, especially after 1942. In August 1938, 1.6 million Germans were eligible for pensions under the RVG and WFVG. Expenditures for the two systems totalled 937 million Reichsmarks, with 99% going to beneficiaries of the RVG. In 1944 expenditures for the war disabled and survivors had increased to 3,491 million Reichs marks, of which 62% was being paid to victims of the Second World War (Die Versor gung der Kriegsopfer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, hrsg. von Presse- und Informations-amt der Bundesregierung, Stand 30.9.52, 15–16). An additional source of war-related social expenditure was the generous pensions paid to military dependents in order to shore up morale and maintain support for the war(on this, see Wachenhelm, Hedwig, “Allowances for Dependents of Mobilised Men in Germany,” International Labour Review, 03. 1940)Google Scholar. Only a very small part of the skyrocketing costs of the war effort was covered by taxes. Instead, the regime employed a system of so-called “noiseless” war financing which consisted of borrowing (i.e., forcing loans) from public corporations, social security funds, and various party agencies, the exploitation of conquered foreign assets and, above all, as in the First World War, deficit financing. As a result, the Reich debt, which had been about 30 billion Reichsmarks at the outset of the war, had risen to nearly 400 billion Reichsmarks by the war's end (Stolper, 147–49, 164–66; Hardach, Karl, The Political Economy of Germany in the Twentieth Century, [Berkeley, 1980], 85Google Scholar). The inflationary consequences of National Socialist financial practices were largely hidden through rigid wage and price controls, but with the collapse of the Third Reich, the fiscal sleight-of-hand could no longer be continued or concealed. The long-established social insurance systems, such as old age, sickness, and industrial disability, which had access to independent and continuing sources of fiscal support, e.g., pension funds (insofar as they had not been totally depleted by government raids) and member contributions, were able, though with considerable difficulty, to reestablish themselves after the war (see n.20, below). Programs dependent solely on public funds, such as those for war victims and military dependents, whose spiraling costs had been covered primarily by the printing press, were, however, Eke the Third Reich, bankrupt.

13. All veterans' organizations, including those concerned solely with the rights of disabled veterans, were also prohibited. On the genesis of JCS 1067 and its implementation, see Gimbel, John, The American Occupation of Germany: Politics and the Military, 1945–1949, (Stanford, 1968)Google Scholar, and Ziemke, Earl F., The U.S. Army and the Occupation of Germany, 1944–46, (Washington, D.C., 1975).Google Scholar

14. On the treatment of war victims in the Soviet zone and the DDR, see Rühland, 98–103, 191–99, and “Tatsachen hinter dem eisernen Vorhang,” Ostinformationsdienst der Bundespressestelle des DGB, no. 9 (19 Dec. 1963).

15. On the treatment of war victims in the western zones, see Rühland, 88–98, 103–19, Die Venorgung der Kriegsopfer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 18–19, and Trometer, Leonhard, “Die Kriegsopferversorgung nach 1945,” Sozialpolitik nach 1945 ed. Bartholomäi, Reinhart et al. (Bonn, 1977), 192–93.Google Scholar

16. “War Pensions in Connection with Demilitarization,” AC O19(MD), 8 Jan. 1947, OMGUS 260, 56/10.

17. According to one estimate, between 25 and 30% of the population in the three western zones needed monetary assistance. Blücher, Franz, “Financial Situation and Currency Reform in Germany,” The Annals, 260 (Nov. 1948): 64.Google Scholar

18. In a public opinion survey conducted in the American zone in April 1946 to sample German opinion regarding support for the claims of various catagories of war victims, the war-disabled were placed at the head of the list of those deserving support (84% favoring aid), followed by those who had been bombed out (75%), expellees (70%), refugees (65%), dependents of war victims (61%), Jews (47%), victims of political per secution (47%), and DPs (39%). Information Control Intelligence Summary No. 45, 8 June 1946, NARS, Record Group 319, Records of Army “I” Staff, Intelligence (G-2) Library, Box 699. Another poll taken later in the year produced similar results, with 63% placing war casualties at the top of the list of those deserving aid. Ann J. and Merritt, Richard L., Public Opinion in Occupied Germany: The OMGUS Surveys, 1945–1949, (Urbana, 1970), 121.Google Scholar

19. “War Pensions in Connection with Demilitarization,“ AC o19(MD) 8 Jan. 1947, OMGUS 260, 56/10.

20. In order to prevent such fears from becoming reality, the military governments decreed that the additional costs incurred by the social insurance programs as a result of their taking over war-disability payments were to be covered by general tax revenues, not pension funds. Moreover, to keep the additional costs as low as possible eligibility requirements for war-disability pensions were more stringent in many areas than those employed by the general program, e.g., for regular members of the industrial accident insurance program disability payments began with a disability of 25%, whereas disabled veterans only began to receive pensions with a disability of more than 40%. For a contemporary account of the difficulties confronting the various social insurance systems in postwar Germany, see Wissel, Rudolf, “Social Insurance in Germany,” The Annals, 260 (11. 1948), esp. 128–30.Google Scholar A recent, comprehensive account of the rebuilding of German social insurance after the war is provided by Hockerts, Hans Günter, Sozialpolitische Entscheidungen im Nachkriegsdeutschland: Alliierte und deutsche Sozialversicherungspolitik 1945 bis 1957, (Stuttgart, 1980).Google Scholar

21. The following is based on Rühland, 103–10.

22. For details and examples, see ibid., 111–19.

23. That the formulation and implementation of occupation policy was not simply a one-way street and involved considerable give and take in other areas as well is confirmed by the recent studies of James Tent and Edward Peterson: Tent, James F., Mission on the Rhine: Reeducation and Denazification in American-Occupied Germany, (Chicago, 1982)Google Scholar; Peterson, Edward N., The American Occupation of Germany: Retreat to Victory, (Detroit, 1978).Google Scholar

24. The degree of “Mitbestimmung” in the treatment of war victims, as in other matters, varied from zone to zone. It was greatest in the American zone, where an independent German position was reinforced by the Länderrat, whose competence was greater than that of the analagous institutions in the other zones, e.g., the Zonenbeirat, of the British zone. In the French, and, especially, the Soviet zones the opportunities for—and extent of—indigenous German input were considerably less than in the American and British zones.

25. Länderrat Unterausschuss Sozialverskherung: Sitzung am 10.4.1946, 3–4 and Sitzung am 9. und 10.10.1946, 15, OMGUS 260, 107/8; “Estimates of Expenditures Arising for Pensions for War Wounded, Widows, and Orphans of Deceased Soldiers,” 16 May 1946, 4–5, OMGUS 260, 56/12; “War Pensions and Social Insurance,” 9 Aug. 1946, 2, “Amendment of Military Government Regulations,” 9 Aug. 1946, TAB C, OMGUS 260, 56/16.

26. The ongoing dialogue between German and U.S. Military Government officials can be traced in the protocols of the Länderrat subcommittee on Social Insurance, OMGUS 260, Boxes 102 and 107 and the OMGUS Manpower Division policy papers in ibid., Boxes 51, 52, and 56. The extent to which OMGUS officials were willing to go in order to root out all vestiges of past, ostensibly militaristic, practices is shown by their response to the Länderrat's, final draft of the new law in which they demanded that the term Versorgung, be replaced by another, since it “has been used in the past to mean the war pensions and special assistance to war veterans which are now prohibited by Military Government Regulations” and their opposition to a war victims' organization using the terms Schwerkriegsbeschädigten, and Kriegshinterbliebenen. “OMGUS Action on Länderrat Proposals,” 27 Nov. 1946 and “Use of Terminology Distinguishing between War Disabled or War Survivors on the one hand and Civilian Disabled or Survivors on the other,” 28 May 1947, OMGUS 260, 56/16 and 56/11.

27. During a discussion of the Länderrat, committee on social policy concerning a law for the employment of the disabled it was noted that the US military government had expressed concern over the plans to set aside 12% of work force places for the seriously disabled, since it could lead to a “Hineinströmung von Militaristen” into public administrations and factories. Länderrat: Sozialpolitischer Ausschuss, 17.9.46, OMGUS 260, 102/7.

28. “Liberalization of Benefits to Widows of War-Killed,” 4 Apr. 1947, OMGUS 260, 51/2; Rühland, 91, 94–95.

29. Akten zur Vorgeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, vol. 5, bearbeitet von Hans-Dieter Kreikamp (Munich, 1981): 33, 604, 652Google Scholar; Rühland, 92–93. For a systematic and comprehensive overview and comparison of the benefits in the three western zones, see Rechtsvergleichende Darstellung über Leistungen an Kriegsopfer in den Ländern der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, BAK, B136/388.

30. See n. 18 above. The war victims were the first social group to receive assistance in the Federal Republic. Die Versorgung der Kriegsopfer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, 6.

31. Trometer, 193–94; Rühland, 120–22.

32. See, for example, the Vorläufiger Referentenentwurf, BAK, B136/389–2 and the proposals presented by the organizations of the war-disabled to the 26. Bundestag Ausschuss, Bundestag Archiv, Bonn, I/87, Band B.

33. One difference was that the BVG, unlike the RVG, covered civilians who had suffered disabilities as a result of the war. In this case, the Allied powers' insistence that military and civilian victims of the war should be treated under the same system was honored; the grounds for this were not ideological or political, however, but practical, since the nature of warfare in the Second World War, in particular the use of strategic bombing, had effectively obliterated the earlier distinction between the home and fighting fronts.

34. On the structure and provisions of the BVG, see Die Versorgung der Kriegsopfer in der Bundesrepublik Deutschhnd, Rühland, 123ff. and Trometer, 193ff.

35. On the expansion of benefits, see Trometer, 196ff.

36. For examples of such decisions, which were unquestionably made in the economic and political spheres, see Politische Weichenstellungen im Nachkriegsdeutschland 1945–1953, ed. Winkler, Heinrich August (Göttingen, 1979Google Scholar), and the introductory sections of the volumes in the series Akten zur Vorgeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1945–1949.

37. The Kriegsopferverbände, whose role I intend to explore in a future study, provide another, related example of continuity with the past, although here there are significant discontinuities as well.

38. This was also true in the case of the fight for the restoration of retirement pensions for professional soldiers, which also were abrogated by occupation officials. The non-partisan support for and eventual restoration of these pensions helped to establish the legitimacy of German officials and politicians in the eyes of many former Berufssoldaten, and helped to reconcile them to the Republic.